The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
With the development of mobile network and convergence of the mobile network and Internet, subscribers of mobile network may be provided with more and more Value Added Service. On the one hand, subscribers desire to access abundant information and mobile Value Added Service conveniently via terminals, such as PDA, laptop, mobile phone, PC, game controller and TV. On the other hand, they generally want them without complicated work, for example, to download software or set parameters manually.
To resolve the above problem, device management technology is developed. In accordance with the Device Management protocol, a Device Management (DM) server may, in Over-The-Air (OTA) manner, provide the subscribers with a series of services such as terminal firmware update, device diagnostic, parameter configuration (setting) and software auto-download and installation.
In other words the DM server which is provided by Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) device, offer a mechanism of managing terminal equipment. The managing operations include: parameter setting, firmware update, software installation and upgrade, application setting, collection and disposal of device errors and event information, for the terminal equipment.
The mechanism of terminal management is as shown in FIG. 1.
Step 1: An external system sends one or more management operations to a DM server. In some embodiments, the external system may be mobile operators managing the DM server or a third party software and (or) service provider.
Step 2: A connection is established between the DM server and terminal equipment.
Step 3: The DM server sends the one or more management operations to the terminal equipment.
Step 4: The terminal equipment performs the one or more operations and returns operation status information.
Step 5: If there are other operations, the DM server sends the operations to the terminal equipment; otherwise, the DM server returns a confirmation message.
Step 6: In response to receiving the management operations from the DM server, the terminal equipment performs the operations and returns operation status information, otherwise, the session ends.
Step 7: The DM server returns the operation result to the external system.
As mentioned above, the DM server implements functions of software installation and upgrade in the terminal equipment, in the OTA manner. It can be called management of software components (or software components management). As shown in FIG. 2, a set of management objects of software components management are set in the terminal equipment to manage terminal software. In FIG. 2, the node Inventory indicates software currently in the terminal equipment. The node Inventory\Deployed indicates the installed software, recording name and version of the software and operations to be performed (such as activation, deactivation and deletion). The node Inventory\Delivered (sub nodes are not marked) indicates software downloaded into the terminal equipment but not installed, recording name and version of the software, operations to be implemented (such as upgrade, installation & activation and upgrade & activation). The node Download (sub nodes are not marked) indicates information that a terminal is to acquire from a DM server or other designated servers, including name and version of the software, URL of download location, and operations to be implemented (such as download, download & installation, download & installation & activation and download & update).
The software upgrade method is as follows:
Step 1: A service provider sends a software upgrade command to terminal equipment via a DM server.
Step 2: The terminal equipment prompts users or subscribers to install update package.
Step 3: The terminal equipment returns the user's selection to the DM server after the user makes a selection.
Step 4: The DM server initiates operations for software download, update and implementation.
Step 5: The terminal equipment returns a confirmation message to the DM server after implementing the operations.
In the existing device management technology, use information of software in the terminal equipment is not monitored and therefore the DM server may not acquire the use frequency of software of the terminal equipment. The Software is not marked and differentiated during upgrade. Many users install software which is unused or seldom used later due to some reasons but upgrade may be implemented to the unused or seldom used software. Therefore, the upgrade of the software which is not often used brings some issues:
Unnecessary burden is added to the network. The reason is, the mobile network bandwidth is quite low but download firmware and software may consume a lot of bandwidth.
User's experience of service is weakened. There are many kinds of software in the terminal equipment and too many prompts for a user to upgrade software he or she seldom uses weaken the user experience.
Parts of terminal equipment resources are unnecessarily consumed. Upgrade for the software a user seldom uses wastes the storage resources of the terminal equipment because the storage capacity of terminal equipment is limited.